What I said above was my attempt to reconstruct the line of thoughts of Putin based on game-theoretical considerations and published documents. His real thoughts may be different and there are other goals as well, first of all, the desire to “resurrect” USSR.
Retreating from Crimea or nuclear Ukraine is unacceptable for their worldview. However, they really want some kind of international agreement which will ensure Russia safety without these two things. I don’t think that such agreement is viable as previous agreement of this type was thrown under a bus—the Budapest memorandum.
If the deal included Ukraine guaranteeing its own protection with nuclear weapons again, the failure case of third-parties deciding they can’t be bothered to protect Ukraine isn’t a problem.
What I said above was my attempt to reconstruct the line of thoughts of Putin based on game-theoretical considerations and published documents. His real thoughts may be different and there are other goals as well, first of all, the desire to “resurrect” USSR.
Retreating from Crimea or nuclear Ukraine is unacceptable for their worldview. However, they really want some kind of international agreement which will ensure Russia safety without these two things. I don’t think that such agreement is viable as previous agreement of this type was thrown under a bus—the Budapest memorandum.
If the deal included Ukraine guaranteeing its own protection with nuclear weapons again, the failure case of third-parties deciding they can’t be bothered to protect Ukraine isn’t a problem.